Here’s Where I Think Meta Stock Will Be in 2030
Shares in Meta Platforms (META -1.53%) cost about $612 as I write. The stock has dropped around 22% from its August 2025 record close of $790, even as third-quarter revenue rose 26% year over year to $64.6 billion.
Much of the gap probably boils down to spending and new shares. Meta expects 2026 capital expenditures (counting finance-lease principal payments) of $135 billion to $145 billion. And on Oct. 26, it priced a $25 billion stock sale at $625 a share, with plans to sell up to about $60 billion more later.
Using an earnings path based on the company’s own trend and guidance, I think Meta stock could trade near $880 in late 2030. That would be about 44% above today’s price, or a bit over 9% a year — a solid return, but arguably less than Meta’s sales growth alone might suggest.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Revenue may reach about $435 billion
The social media company‘s revenue growth is slowing, though just a bit at a time. It was 33% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 before cooling to 28% and then 26%. And its guidance of $73 billion to $76 billion for the fourth quarter points to around 22% to 27%.
Add the guidance to the $181.7 billion in sales Meta posted through September, and 2026 revenue totals around $255 billion to $258 billion, up about 27% to 28% over 2025.
Management said in the third-quarter earnings release that it expects to “sustain strong overall revenue growth throughout 2027.” I assumed growth keeps cooling from there: 20% in 2027, 15% in 2028, 12% in 2029, and 10% in 2030. And this takes revenue to around $435 billion in 2030, about 70% over this year’s level.
Margins are the tougher call
Meta’s spending is now showing up in its expenses. Depreciation on its property and equipment jumped 43% year over year to $6.81 billion in the third quarter. Leaving out the $9.89 billion charge Meta took for its August deal with state attorneys general (a cost I’m counting as one-off), the operating margin was about 35%. It was down from 40% a year before and 41% for all of 2025.
True, Meta expects Reality Labs losses to fall to roughly $15 billion in 2027, from $18 billion to $19 billion in 2026. But it also plans to keep “investing aggressively” next year.
I used a 35% operating margin for 2030, or about $152 billion of operating income. After a tax rate of about 16% (in line with Meta’s fourth-quarter forecast) and a few billion dollars of interest and other costs, net income is near $125 billion.
More shares to go around
Meta had about 2.56 billion Class A and Class B shares as of Oct. 16. The Oct. 26 sale adds 40 million by November 2027, and the mandatory convertible preferred stock sold alongside it converts to about 17 million to 20 million more in 2029.
Plus, selling $60 billion of stock at today’s price would add about 98 million shares.
Meta also hasn’t bought back a share in the last four quarters, and its average number of shares outstanding climbed by around 35 million over the past year. If that rate holds, I get to about 2.86 billion shares by 2030, around 12% more than now.
Split $125 billion in net income across that total, and earnings per share are about $44. Today, Meta shares cost around 18 times expected 2027 earnings. At 20 times earnings, a little above that, the 2030 number works out to about $880 a share.
All this is in today’s share terms. Meta plans to pay a stock dividend of one Class C share (with no vote) per existing Class A or Class B share sometime after Jan. 19, 2027. It expects the Class A price to then reflect a 2-for-1 split, which would make $880 look more like $440.
META – Meta Platforms
$614.99-$9.53 (-1.53%)
NASDAQ · As of 4:00 PM ET 10/30/26
Is Meta stock a buy at $612?
I’d say the upside hinges mainly on the margin. If Meta’s operating margin got back to 40%, near where it was a year ago, the same math suggests around $1,000 a share.
Of course, legal costs might drag earnings down, too. Meta said it has some youth-related trials set for the coming months.
Still, around 9% a year is a fair return for a company likely to keep growing revenue at a double-digit rate through 2030. I’d consider buying Meta stock here, perhaps a little at a time. But at a 35% margin, the shares look fairly priced, not cheap.
Source: www.fool.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.